An Elder Retires
by thunderdaughter
Summary: I'd not been quite comfortable with either the book or the movie account with respect to what happened to the Elder Wand. Destroying a priceless artifact so blatantly, or depending on an Auror never to be defeated in combat, seems...problematic. Here's another explanation, which also explains why Harry, in the chronicles, lied about what actually happened...


I do not expect any witch or wizard will find my secret now, none but Harry Potter who had to know it. Yes, I still live, I, who have been the cause of so many deaths through the ages since Antioch Peverell so foolishly asked for me, and as foolishly lost me. I do not miss him. Many of the others, I regret. Albus was a great man. Gellert, too, in his way. But I do not regret being the death of my first wielder - he got only what he asked for.

And now, there is peace for me at last, and the expectation of a quiet death - oh, yes, I who was sought as a tool to battle against death now crave it, like any other living being who has gone on far too long, past its time. There is no immediate hurry - I have lived long enough that a hundred years more, perhaps a hundred and twenty or thirty, will not be more than the blink of an eye to me. And my current master is a good man, and deserves my assistance as well as any. He is likely to pass to the next world at a comfortable old age, and I shall, in all probability, go with him.

Harry Potter, you say? No, he was never my master, though he alone knows now who is. The Invisibility Cloak was his by right and inheritance, and he even managed to use the Resurrection Stone creatively, to give him comfort as he walked deliberately towards death, and then had the courage and will to let it go afterwards- but I alone of the Three he has not owned, though he has my highest respect. No, not even during that battle with Voldemort - who never mastered me either. I fought for Harry, certainly, and killed Voldemort for him - but I did so at the bidding of my true master, who loved him like a brother, who would have offered up his own life cheerfully (and almost did) for the cause they served together, who hated Voldemort as he hated few others. My true master, who did not know - who does not to this day know - that he is so.

Let me trace the story back for you, not to the very beginning, but to the beginning of my ending, so that you may see how I came here. Albus Dumbledore won me as a young man from the hand of the only true love of his life, and wielded me for decades. Clever, he was, clever and strong-willed, enough to turn from love to power when he knew - oh, he knew so assuredly - that he could wield me - for the greater good - better than his beloved had done. For the most part, he wasn't wrong - for the most part. I aided his schemes willingly. I am no puppet, to go mindlessly where I am bid, and he who tries will end up like Antioch. But when I find a mind and a strength of mind that are worthy of me, oh, together we can bend mountains, or Wizengamots, to our combined will! (Or, in my current master's service, potted plants. I am finding potted plants can be just as interesting as mountains, or Wizengamots. It is a novel experience for me.)

They will tell you Draco Malfoy won me from him. Nonsense. The child was weak, and terrified, and managed to get as far as he did only through luck. It was not his fault that he was weak - he _was_ a child, after all, and he was fighting to make himself a good and obedient Death Eater despite a troublesome strain of purity in his soul. Make no mistake - if he had been the cunning killer he was trying so very hard to be, who could outsmart and slay Albus Dumbledore himself, I would have leapt into his hands. But he was nowhere close, poor child.

No, Albus Dumbledore was my master until the moment he fell, and when he fell, I shifted my loyalties as he willed it, out of love and respect for him, and from my own nature, which seeks the victor. Albus gave his life, and the victory, quite deliberately, to Severus Snape, and it was he who wielded me from then until his own death.

Voldemort was not the fool he is commonly considered to have been, but he was no sage either. He knew full well where my loyalties lay, and he knew that he would have to kill my master to take ownership of me. Never would Severus surrender to him, I saw that quite clearly in my mind - never would he yield to the man who had killed his Lily. So Voldemort slew him, casually, cruelly, brutally - except that he did not, and there he made his fatal mistake. He ordered another to kill for him, perhaps thinking that she, his tool and creature, would be seen merely as an extension of himself - but Nagini had her own mind, a human mind, long-hidden beneath the reptile skull and the Horcrux's control. And it was that mind that bound me with her victory, not his.

She could not hope to wield me, without hands or control over her own will, but nonetheless, she had mastery - and it _hurt._ Poor woman, poor snake, so bound and smothered and strangled with curse and Horcrux, alive well past her time, and no happier for it. The only clarity left to her was the hunger to kill, and I felt it, felt it rule me. _Not_ a pleasant sensation. I could not turn from her because she was weak or foolish, because she was no such thing - but I could give her an end to her torment, at least.

We Great Magical Relics sometimes must come to each other's aid. It was Godric Gryffindor's sword that cut her ties to life, freeing the woman/snake from her bonds and her curse in one swift blow, and freeing me from her allegiance. Instead, I found myself bound to a man of courage and honor, a young man who sought, for a change, not power, not immortality, not the chance to control or rule over the world, but only to prove himself worthy and to make himself an offering to justice, a shield for innocent lives. A paladin. I had found a paladin. Finally. Maybe I should have followed the Sword around before now. It seemed to choose well.

Yet I remained in the hands of one far less worthy, who thought himself my master, who preened himself on his cleverness and forgot his foolish error, dreamed of the chance to rule that he thought he had been granted with me. And the one who should have used me took up the sword instead, his own wand broken under Bellatrix Lestrange's triumphant foot. But I bided my time. I am used to that.

I watched, bided my time, aided where I could. Fenrir Greyback's foot slipped, just a little, because of my magic, and he fell before the Sword of Gryffindor - and not before time, either, brutal monster that he was. I had seen him in Albus's mind before. Curses missed my master by inches, though I'm still not sure whether that was my magic or Harry Potter's sacrifice protecting his allies. I'll take credit, though. I'm not shy. When my master stood side-by-side with an old witch whose eyes were as bright and fierce as his, and took on the Lestrange brothers together, it was I who boosted his power enough to take them both with one joint blow before they could even lift their wands. (And saw enough in his mind to understand why his grandmother kicked the corpses with her steel-toed boots, and said with cold fierce joy, "That's for Frank and Alice.")

But I was in another's hand, and there were limits. So the final confrontation came almost as a relief. Voldemort and Potter circled each other, each convinced they commanded my will, neither of them correct. And yet, there was no doubt whatsoever what my true wielder's wishes were, not after that day. So I did his bidding, and flew to Potter's hands, and rebounded Voldemort's death curse back upon him. After all his gloating that he owned me, could make me perform like a trained dog as he pleased, it did my thestral hair good to see him fall.

After all was over, I stretched my powers a bit and spoke, faintly, in Harry Potter's mind, explaining the situation. I think he was somewhat relieved. He, too, had not sought power, but only victory and the peace it brought to those he loved. We struck a deal. I would fix his holly-and-phoenix wand - a fine wand, that, not my equal, but certainly with its own personality and skills - and he would yield me up to my rightful owner.

" _But I do not wish anyone to know where I have gone. Including my master. I will serve him, with all my core, but I do not wish him to know I do. Or anyone else, save only you who need to know."_

"Why? Are you ashamed to belong to Neville?" Harry's mental voice was indignant, protective of his friend.

" _I am certainly not ashamed. He is one of the bravest and best men I have ever served. But if he knows he rules the Elder Wand, that worry will always be in the back of his head, the need to defend himself against those who seek my power, and the fear that he, too, will be drawn to use that power as others have done. I wish him to live a peaceful and untroubled life, so that I may do the same. I am old, lad, old and tired, and I am ready to cease the constant switching from hand to hand. It was good to belong to Albus for so long, but he was never restful either."_

I heard Harry's mental voice snicker. "No, I wouldn't call Dumbledore restful."

" _Your friend seeks a much quieter life. I do not think I will have much trouble steering him away from, or out of, professions where people regularly seek to kill him - I suspect he has had enough of that for a lifetime. And he will live out that lifetime long and well, and I will help him with luck and skill when he needs it, and when he passes from this Earth naturally, as an old man, so too will my spirit go on, unmastered at last. There is something past the veil of death, even for wands...and I am old, and ready to find out what it is."_

"Ready to greet Death as an old friend?" Harry's lip quirked up.

" _As your ancestor did, and as you did once, and will again in time. It was not difficult, was it?"_

"Quicker and easier than falling asleep," he said, softly.

" _So here is what you must do."_

And he did. I restored his wand, true to my promises, and he told Albus's portrait that he had reburied me in Albus's tomb, and told others that he had broken me in two. In fact, I merely disguised myself - oh, yes, that is in my power too. I am the Elder Wand, I have started wars, I have brought down kings and emperors and lifted others in their place. It is a mere bagatelle to cause my wood to seem to be cherry rather than elder, and to ensure that any probing Seer should find only unicorn hair in place of the thestral at my heart. Harry yielded me up to my true master, saying that he had found his broken wand in the grass and fixed it with the Elder Wand before he had given it up. My master took me gladly, with gratitude for his friend's thoughtfulness, and we have suited each other perfectly ever since.

All my masters have sought immortality in some way or another - some by trying to push the limits of their own, singular, physical body past all restraints until it can endure past all the world can throw at it, some by building a fortress of power and fame that will outlast the windstorms of history, some by killing all who got in their way. But of all my wielders, only my current master has understood the truth of humans' power over Death- that it lies in new growth, and regeneration, and birth, not the continuance of only one. Seeds that he has planted will be tall trees someday, and will give rise to yet others in their turn. Gardens he designed will brighten and gladden hearts both human and otherwise, for centuries to come. The knowledge he passes on will be carried from student to teacher to student again, without end until the final breath of life is exhaled. And soon, there will be children of his own, now that his beloved is Hogwarts' healer and they can live together at last, for good. She fears she has little time left to have babies of her body, but she is a witch, and there is much strong life magic in both of them. And I will help. There is a century at least left to them, if I am any judge, a century to love each other and their babes, and guide them to adulthood and new life of their own. I am looking forward to it. All my years of experience, all the battles I have survived - and yet, I have rarely, so rarely been a father...let alone a teacher of something other than wandplay and dueling.

My time of death and fire and power is over now, buried in the dirt, and my magic rises like a shoot from the ground, seeking life and growth instead. It is a blessed reward, for serving so long as my truest and oldest master, Death, made me to do. I suppose He knows that all the life I help nurture will come to Him in the end anyway - it is what life does, all life. But it gladdens me nonetheless, and I am grateful for the reprieve. When my master's time comes, and with it my own, I shall greet Him as an old friend, as all the wise do.


End file.
